Why 2014 Isn’t (and Shouldn’t Be) a Foreign Policy Election

Marc Ambinder finds it strange that foreign policy is being ignored in the midterm elections:

Some wags like to say that midterms don’t usually turn on foreign policy. But two of the past three — 2002 and 2006 — certainly did. In those races, at least one of the two parties had something to say. In 2002, the GOP ran on scaring the hell out of everyone and by using tactics that morphed the faces of disabled veteran senators into Osama bin Laden’s. In 2006, Democrats won seats based on voters’ general antipathy to the Bush war record and their own pledge to work to withdraw troops from Iraq.

2014 should be a foreign policy election. But it isn’t.

If we compare this year to the other midterm years when foreign policy loomed large in the voters’ minds, it’s not hard to understand why these issues are being neglected now. The ’02 election took place a little over a year after the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil, and it was happening in the middle of the ongoing debate over attacking Iraq that stemmed from the administration’s agitation for war. It was therefore an extremely unusual election that we wouldn’t expect to be repeated unless there were similar conditions today, and the conditions aren’t remotely similar. The 2006 election followed what had been up until then the worst year of the Iraq war, which saw not only an increase in American casualties but also a major deterioration in security for Iraqis. Bush and his allies made a point of demagoguing national security for political gain in 2002, and then suffered a backlash in 2006 because of the administration’s incompetence and disastrous Iraq policy. These elections have two things in common: they happened at a time when national security and foreign policy issues were at the forefront of voters’ minds because they were directly affecting the U.S. or U.S. forces, and the president’s party was clearly positioned to gain or lose support specifically because of these issues. Neither of these things is true this year, and so these issues attract little attention and don’t cut for or against the president’s party in a big way.

It’s worth considering why Ambinder thinks 2014 “should” be a foreign policy election. He thinks this because he is overreacting to foreign events:

The world is en fuego, with American interests at peril and President Obama’s foreign policy failing to stem the chaos.

It’s pure hyperbole to say that “the world” is on fire right now. For the vast majority of nations, there is no armed conflict, nor is there an extraordinary degree of disorder or violence. If we keep foreign threats to U.S. interests in perspective, we will find that U.S. interests are mostly not imperiled, and the U.S. itself is as secure as it has been in decades. The current freakout about how dangerous the world has become depends almost entirely on exaggeration of threats by politicians, alarmist coverage by the media, and a failure to appreciate how much less dangerous overall the world is today compared to previous decades.

For that matter, the preoccupation with the foreign conflicts that are happening is almost entirely an elite concern. Those that are most inclined to panic and exaggerate dangers to the U.S. are also most likely to have an absurdly broad definition of U.S. interests in the first place, and the public doesn’t share that view. Election campaigns are ignoring foreign policy because voters don’t perceive these conflicts overseas as problems that their candidates should be focused on, and candidates have no incentive to dwell on issues that voters don’t care about or to advocate for policies that most voters reject. When a candidate does this, as Santorum famously did during his failed re-election bid in 2006, he will often lose. One can like or dislike voters’ priorities, but it makes no sense to expect them or their candidates to pay attention to issues that don’t matter to them. 2014 isn’t a foreign policy election, and there is no reason to think that it should be one.

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1) Of elected officials, foreign policy views are the most immediate impactful. After the Reagan Revolution, most economic and social battles have had relatively small changes while foreign policy is the most immediate. I want to know if elected officials want to bomb Iran, start Iraq III, or take more measures against Russia.
2) Although you probably agree, The World Is Not Burning! In fact the world today is more peaceful today than say the 1950 – 1990. (Admittingly the world was ‘safer in 1990 – 2008 but I think that has more to do with the US and global economies over-growing during the dotcom & housing bubble.)

Another consideration is that Obama has been interventionist and pro Israel enough to render the usual GOP claim re Democratic presidents’ FP, ie that they are “too soft,” nugatory. It is now bombs away in Iraq. It was bombs away in Libya. Obama clearly wanted it to be bombs away in Syria. Obama merely tut tutted over Israel’s most recent display of grotesque barbarism. Obama has not closed Guantanamo, and he has continued and legalized the drone/special forces/assassination wars, and the assault on privacy. And in the one war he is shutting down, Afghanistan (where he also initially went for bombs away), he is doing so in a very gradual manner.

In theory, perhaps, the “out” party could make a case for an anti interventionist FP, but no Repub whose last name is not “Paul” even tries to do that. And with no new terrorist attack of any moment (“Benghazi” shows the desperation of the GOP, the grasping at any straw in this regard), and no ground war/quagmire ongoing, other than Afghanistan, and that one winding down and inherited in any case, an anti interventionist pitch is not likely to succeed anyway. As Mr. Larison implies, without great US losses (civilian as in 9/11 or military as in Iraq during the occupation), the public just doesn’t care that much.

I think regular people who watch Fox (and other TV news) are the type of people that care about foreign policy probably more than domestic policy. I truly hope I’m wrong about this. But, if one can judge from Facebook and Twitter and media (and I don’t know if you can) – everyone is going around with their hair on fire about ISIS.

Daniel, you fail to take into account that there are bad things happening on the other side of the world, and Obama-the-impotent one has yet to fix them while also balancing the budget, lowering taxes, and healing the coral reefs.

In addition: Puppies. Some of them are still sad. Right here in America.

Would Reagan have stood for this? Would he have done nothing but talk while Russia trampled on its neighbors to the west? Would he have sat on his hands had the Monroe Doctrine been violated? Would he have redeployed American troops from the Middle East just because we got our nose bloodied? Would he have supported Muslim holy warriors who later might have caused problems, leaving their country in chaos?

You know he wouldn’t. Or, if he did, he’d have had good reasons, unlike this guy.

It won’t be a foreign policy election because there are no meaningful choices on the ballot.

1. Democrats under Obama, Clinton, Kerry, Schumer, etc. pursue an idiotic foreign policy, informed by neither grand strategy nor minimal forethought. It consists of meddling repeatedly in random places where no U.S. interest is at stake, wasting American resources, killing innocent people abroad and achieving nothing beneficial to us or to the various affected peoples.

2. The opposition party mostly wants the United States to do the same stupid things, but on an even larger scale and with somewhat less reluctance to put American soldiers in harm’s way.

Actually 2014 should be about foreign policy but not for the reasons Ambinder lists. Ideally the election would be a great way to educate the American people how such policies affect them whether through blowback, direct military intervention and the fact the size of government and deficits are directly related to bloated defense budgets and the bloated budgets of the national security state. You can’t balance the budget on the backs of NPR.